In The Year 2020: DIS Magazine Predicts The Future For e-flux’s Venice Biennale Journal

For the 26th day of e flux’s journal for the 56th Venice Biennale, DIS magazine took a look into the near future, crowdsourcing material submitted from their extended network in an attempt to predict the styles and customs of the coming decade. DIS tapped “collaborators, thinkers, and friends” of the magazine—participants include Nick DeMarco, Amlia Ulman, and a bunch of folks “curated” by Hans Ulrich Obrist—to turn in predictions, which were then edited into one seamless piece.

There is a lot of good stuff in here, a few art-centric highlights are below:

“Appropriation is illegal. Artworks with identifiable references, monitored by apps, are relegated to the category of ‘entertainment.’ All degrees become obsolete except for curation, which is taught in primary school; a trend in child curators bolsters a surge in crafts-based art and pottery. Curation becomes the highest art form and artists must become publicists for curators in order to survive.” (Ada O’Higgins)

“Big art museums no longer expand, they merge with other museums, science centers, and in particular botanical and zoological gardens. The discussion surrounding the De-Extinction of Art reaches new heights when Mona Lisa is revived on her original organic support, a forever-warping poplar panel.” (Toke Lykkeberg)

“Culture finally liberates itself from its tendency to resort to modernist categorization, and operates cross-sectionally and globally between communities (virtual and physical). The infamous ‘gap’ between art and life closes after over a century of separation. There are no more ‘artists,’ ‘interior designers,’ or ‘PR agents,’ there are simply operators within culture.” (Jeppe Ugelvig)

“Teenage financiers who are always at least ten steps ahead of fruitless attempts to regulate the mainstreaming of finance online. These teenage financiers advise contemporary artists on fiscal strategy. This leads to a seismic shift out of contemporary art’s past socioeconomic ecology and into one where the gallery system is forced to rapidly reform. Collectors get cold feet and flood the market with unwanted artworks. Having foreseen this turn, teenage financiers and their artist/curator clients cash in on the art market’s fall in value. With the end of contemporary art and the deflation of the transnational exhibition format as a driver of value, grounds previously occupied by biennials are given over to the Global Housing Authority for Displaced Populations, while the Cloud Biennial becomes the publicly accessible dedicated archive for the contemporary art era.” (Victoria Ivanova)